For when sane just isn’t good enough

Apple TV – Do We Really Need It?

This morning I read a review of Apple TV, a service that lets you buy movies and music online, and then enables you to watch it on your television. This amazing new service also enables you to view photos and watch YouTube videos on your TV! And all you need to do is pay $229 for a “set-top box”, which comes with a remote control. And voila!

Wait a minute… don’t we kinda have this already? We can buy music and movies online. And the technology to connect a computer directly to a television has existed for quite a while. Hence, we can easily access those items through the TV already. So watching YouTube and your photographs on your television is nothing new.

I think the Apple TV service could be a very good one, though, as it amalgamates quite a couple of offerings, and also lets you view these items on an iPhone and iPod (provided you have these items, of course).

But why does Apple require customers to buy the set box in order to avail of its Apple TV service? Why don’t they just let you access the service via a computer? Is there some reason beyond the monetary?

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3 Responses

Oh, that’s just the way TV is going now. It’s called Video on Demand. All of the big TV channels and movie houses are looking into this technology, in fact mauling to get the one up on the others as far as this is concerned. (Sameer’s class had a whole lecture and assignment dedicated to it in Business Stragegy class.) Odds are in the next ten years or so this will be the norm as far as entertainment goes. You don’t have to go “Ooh, Indy’s coming on at 8 this Friday” and then sit yourself down at that time but instead at 2am on a Tuesday morning just go “Oh, I feel like watching something now. What’s in the catalogue?” Then you just select it and it streams to your TV via the internet.

Do we need it? Well, that’s probably like the DVD vs Blue Ray argument. 😉 Either way the technology is there and the big companies are all in. Now to see if it catches on in a big way or not. Likely it will.

Oh, and why you need the box. Sameer says this is because people don’t like watching movies on their computer screens, preferring instead their large, flat screens. To do this, you effectively need a modem that is capable of connecting to a TV, which is exactly what the “set top” box is.

When I said “Why don’t they just let you access the service via a computer?”, I actually meant, why don’t they let you do that, and then you can just hook your existing computer up to the TV.

I suppose the reason for the box is really just to tie you to one particular service provider, for a wide range of services. After all, you’re probably not gonna want to buy more than one of those boxes.